Turn your router's transmit power down to about half, and a crowded home Wi-Fi network gets steadier

One setting, then restart MakeUseOf's Oliver Haslam, writing on September 7, sends you to Transmit Power Control, usually filed under Advanced Wireless Settings once you sign in to the router at 192.168.0.1 or 10.0.0.1, and recommends Medium or about the 50% mark instead of maximum. His reasoning is that a router at full power drowns out the small antennas in phones and smart home devices, bounces echoes off hard surfaces indoors, forces neighboring networks into Co-Channel Interference that makes them pause, and keeps devices locked onto the loudest signal rather than roaming to a nearer access point. The article's images show TP-Link, Netgear Orbi, ASUS, and GL.iNet gear, and he says to restart the router afterward and let things settle. One thing the article does not do is weigh the trade: it names no downside to lowering power, so walk to your weakest room after the change and step back up a notch if coverage there suffers.

Learn two, then two more XDA's Tanveer Singh, writing on September 7, lists the seven he wishes he had known sooner. Win and E opens a fresh File Explorer window without hunting for the taskbar icon. Backspace moves up one folder, Alt with the left and right arrows retrace and advance along the exact path you took, and Alt with the up arrow jumps to the parent folder. Alt and Enter opens Properties for whatever is selected, which he says changes the game once it replaces the right-click. Holding Shift while clicking a taskbar icon, or clicking it with the scroll wheel, opens a second instance of an app, and holding Ctrl and Shift as you launch one starts it as administrator. Win and comma peeks at the desktop while every window stays exactly where it is, and Win with the up arrow maximizes the active window.

Four toggles, then four more MakeUseOf's Gregory Gibson, writing on September 6, works through Settings in order. Under Personalization and then Taskbar he switches off Search, Task View, Widgets, and Resume. Under Personalization and then Start he turns off recently added apps, recommended files, tips, and suggestions. Under Privacy and security, then Search permissions, he disables Search highlights, and to stop web suggestions inside the Start menu he adds a DisableSearchBoxSuggestions value from Windows Terminal, which is the one step that edits the registry and deserves a careful hand. He reports less visual clutter and better responsiveness on a slow connection, and keeps what he removed on the keyboard instead: Win and S for search, Win and Tab for Task View.

View, then New Window How-To Geek's Tony Phillips, writing on September 7, stopped fighting his habit of reaching for Alt and Tab and made Excel fit it instead. Click View and then New Window, and Excel opens a second window onto the same workbook rather than a copy: the title bar labels them with the file name followed by a 1 and a 2, and an edit made in either window saves to the one file. That turns Alt and Tab into a worksheet switcher, which he finds far less tedious than pressing Ctrl with Page Up or Page Down when the two sheets sit several tabs apart. He points to Excel's Watch Window as the alternative for the narrower job of keeping an eye on a few selected cells without moving between sheets at all.